§ 11 

Now I venture to go further and assert that laws which force people to enter certain trades are harmful to the Nation and reduce its gain: I am moved to do so for four reasons which are very important in my opinion.

In all Europe there is no fixed principle yet governing this distribution of workmen; for such laws are sometimes made to improve a new kind of handicraft or manufacture; sometimes to procure a livelihood for more inhabitants, and sometimes to give the owner of a workshop a greater profit by reducing wages.

Sometimes this is done to make our manufactures exportable; sometimes to produce some necessity or other within the Country. Now such an arrangement is made so that our own shipowners may profit by the freights on our own goods and Swedish men by wages; now, again, to get gold and silver into the country. Sometimes the Statutes aim at preventing the people emigrating; sometimes they aim at checking luxury. Sometimes they are found necessary to maintain order in trade and industry, and sometimes they must exist to prevent people driving different trades at the same time, and innumerable other things.

Is not all this lacking in the right sort of System? And must not a house built after so many designs have a strange appearance and lack the necessary stability?